1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an improved motion estimation. In particular, the present invention relates to a method for estimation of a motion vector between blocks of images in a video sequence and a corresponding motion estimator.
2. Description of the Related Art
Motion estimation is employed in an increasing number of applications, in particular, in digital signal processing of modern television receivers. Specifically, modern television receivers perform a frame-rate conversion, typically in the form of an up-conversion or motion compensated up-conversion, for increasing the picture quality of the reproduced images. Motion compensated up-conversion is performed, for instance, for video sequences having a field or frame frequency of 50 Hz to higher frequencies like 60 Hz, 66.67 Hz, 75 Hz, 100 Hz etc. While a 50 Hz input signal frequency mainly applies to television signals broadcast based on PAL or SECAM standard, NTSC based video signals have an input frequency of 60 Hz. A 60 Hz input video signal may be up-converted to higher frequencies like 72 Hz, 80 Hz, 90 Hz, 120 Hz etc.
During up-conversion, intermediate images are to be generated which reflect the video content at positions in time which are not represented by the 50 Hz or 60 Hz input video sequence. For this purpose, the motion of moving objects has to be taken into account in order to appropriately reflect the changes between subsequent images caused by the motion of objects. The motion of objects is calculated on a block basis, and motion compensation is performed based on the relative position in time of the newly generated image between the previous and subsequent images.
For motion vector determination, each image is divided into a plurality of blocks. Each block is subjected to motion estimation in order to detect a shift of an object from the previous image. A time consuming full search algorithm for detecting a best match block in the previous image within a predefined search range is preferably avoided by employing a plurality of predefined candidate vectors. The set of candidate vectors includes a number of predefined most likely motion vectors.
A motion vector is selected from the candidate vectors based on an error value calculated for each of the candidate vectors. This error function assesses the degree of conformity between the current block and the candidate block in the previous image selected in accordance with the respective candidate vector. The best matching vector having the smallest error function is selected as the motion vector of the current block. As a measure for the degree of similarity between the current and the previous block, the Sum of Absolute Differences (SAD) may be employed.
The set of predefined candidate vectors may include those motion vectors as candidate vectors which have already been determined for adjacent blocks of the current image, motion vectors which have been determined for blocks in the previous image at a similar position, etc.
The article “An Efficient True-Motion Estimator Using Candidate Vectors from a Parametric Motion Model” from Gerard de Haan et al. in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 8, no. 1, February 1998, describes the calculation of a global motion vector as a candidate vector. The global motion vector reflects a common motion of all blocks of the image.
EP-A-0 578 290 describes further candidate vectors which are based on the motion vectors of adjacent blocks of the current image. The length and direction of these vectors is modified by adding an update vector having a random magnitude. The selection of this type of vectors as motion vector of the current block can be controlled by adding predefined penalty values to the respective SAD. In accordance with the added penalty, the likelihood to be selected as the motion vector of the current block can be respectively reduced.
In addition to image interpolation, motion estimation is further employed during the encoding of video images in order to exploit temporal redundancies. For this purpose, a plurality of video encoding standards has been developed. In wide-spread use are the encoding standards denoted as H.26x or MPEG-x.